Vatican website succumbs to online attack

Francis X. Rocca|
Catholic News Service

1/01/70

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican's official website suffered an
attack by computer hackers March 7, cutting off access by
users for several hours.

Italian media outlets reported that the website, vatican.va,
became unresponsive around mid-afternoon local time, just as
several other websites carried messages taking credit for the
disruption in the name of the hacking group Anonymous. Email
to and from the vatican.va domain was reportedly also blocked
for at least part of the time.

A posting on one Italian site claimed that the attack was an
act of revenge for an array of outrages, including the sexual
abuse of children by Catholic priests and the historic
practice of selling indulgences for sins.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See
Press Office, confirmed that vatican.va had been the "object
of an attack," but said in a statement that he had no other
information or comment to offer.

The incident occurred one day after U.S. federal prosecutors
in New York announced criminal charges against four people
affiliated with several hacking groups, including Anonymous.
The four were charged with disrupting Internet service and
breaching the privacy of computer systems belonging to Fox
Broadcasting Co. and the Public Broadcasting System, among
others.

The same day those indictments were announced, hackers
identifying themselves as members of an Anonymous splinter
group, LulzSec, reportedly took over the website of a Spanish
firm, Panda Labs, after one of its executives posted a blog
post praising the arrests.

It was not clear if the hackers who targeted the Vatican's
site were responding to the previous day's arrests or if the
timing of the attack was merely coincidental.

Last August, so-called "distributed denial-of-service"
attacks on the website of the Vatican-affiliated World Youth
Day in Madrid, attended by Pope Benedict XVI, came several
weeks after the appearance of YouTube videos threatening such
attacks in the name of Anonymous. The videos presented the
attacks as punishment for clerical sex abuse and other
"abominations of the Catholic Church."